Announcement of a new version of 3ds Max – this is a good habit to show SIGGRAPH. This year was no exception. The new version of 3ds Max is not the tenth, as might be expected, and was named Autodesk 3ds Max 2008. The main thing that the developers have paid attention at preparing a new version – improved performance when working with complex scenes. Promise that the operations on objects in the viewport will be producing 60 times faster, and the appointment of the materials – about 10 times faster even when working with thousands of objects. For large scenes of the program added Scene Explorer – a window in which the elements are presented in a hierarchical structure, and there are tools for scene analysis and editing.

Program developers promise that the model will now be much easier, artists rarely have to go to the menu. How exactly will a new approach to modeling has not yet been reported. Also in the program added a set of tools, organized under the title Review, with which you can be online to do a preview of the shadows, setting the architectural materials, the environment. Made some improvements, that relate to mental ray, in particular, provided a means Sky Portal, makes it easy to adjust the lighting of interiors with light coming from the outside. Sky Portal supports lighting effects, which are based on HDRI. Professionals using 3ds Max to create complex projects, access to a built-in MAXScript ProEditor, which will significantly increase the possibility of creating scripts. In addition, improved compatibility with other applications, Autodesk, added a new option Select Similar (highlight similar), and import the data become more precise, and tools for communications between the files were usovershenstvany.